Spiritual Quotations

Compiled by Bill Petix

Table of Contents

Abundance = 1 Ignorance = 50 Anger = 2, 3 The Journey = 51 - 53 Awakening = 4 - 7 Karma = 53 - 55 Bodily Fascination = 7, 8 Kindness = 55 - 57 Change = 8 - 12 Light = 58 - 61 Character = 13 Longing = 62, 63 Choice 14, 15 Love = 63 - 66 Courage = 16, 17 Meditation = 67 - 71 Criticism = 17 - 19 Mind = 72 - 74 Death and Dying = 19 - 26 Music of the Spheres = 75, 76 Desire = 26 - 30 Obedience = 77, 78 Determination = 31 Old Age = 79, 80 Discipline = 32 - 34 Patience = 80 - 82 Doubt = 35 Perseverance = 82, 83 Effort = 36, 37 Prayer = 84, 85 Failure = 37 - 39 Purification = 86 - 88 Faith = 40 Regret = 89 God = 41, 42 Remembrance = 90 God’s Will = 43, 44 Solitude = 91, 92 Grace = 45, 46 Speech = 92, 93 Gratitude = 46, 47 Surrender = 94 - 97 Growth = 47, 48 Third Eye = 98, 99 Habits = 49 Virtue = 100, 101

Spiritual Quotations

Abundance

What an unspeakable blessing! The time has come to realize Him at last. It is thy turn to meet God. (Sant Kirpal Singh)

Sant Kirpal Singh

You can take as much water from the ocean as you are capable of carrying, but if you don’t bother to go down to the shore with a pot you get nothing at all. (Annamalai Swami) If you approach the ocean with a cup, you can only take away a cupful; if you approach it with a bucket you can take away a bucketful. (Ramana Maharshi)

Ramana Maharshi

There is enough in the world for everyone’s need; there is not enough for everyone’s greed. (Mahatma Gandhi) When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. (Lao-tzu) God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance. (Saint Paul)

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Anger

Anger and hatred are the materials from which hell is made. (Thich Nhat Hanh) There is no sin or wrong that gives a man such a foretaste of hell in this life as anger and impatience. (Saint Catherine of Siena) The wise conquer by strength, rather than anger. The malevolent fall by their own rage. (Tibetan saying) The wise man does not argue, he remains silent and goes quietly on his path. (White Eagle)

Chief White Eagle

The best response you can give to anger is silence. (Shantidasa) Human nature is so constituted that if we take absolutely no notice of anger or abuse, the person indulging in it will soon weary of it and stop. (Mahatma Gandhi) Hesitation is the best cure for anger. The first blows of anger are heavy, but if it waits, it will think again. (Seneca) Whenever I wish to move or speak, first I shall examine my state of mind, and firmly act in a suitable way. Whenever my mind becomes attached or angry, I shall not react, nor shall I speak; I shall remain mum and unmoved like a tree. (Shantideva)

-3- When a sage is angry, he is no longer a sage. (Talmud) Anger is momentary madness. (Horace) Anger begins with madness, and ends with regret. (Abraham Hasdai) Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret. (Ambrose Bierce) You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger. (Buddha) A thought of anger or hatred sends arrows from the mental factory towards the person aimed at, hurts the individual, sets up discord and disharmony in the thought-world, and comes back again to the sender and harms the sender also. (Sivananda) To be angry is to revenge the faults of others upon ourselves. (Alexander Pope) Consider how much more you suffer from your anger and grief, than from the very things for which you are angry and grieved. (Marcus Aurelius)

Marcus Aurelius

Whenever you are angry, be assured that it is not only a present evil, but you have increased a habit, added fuel to a fire. (Epictetus) Frequent fits of anger produce in the soul a propensity to be angry, which oftentimes ends in a bad temper, bitterness, and morosity; then the mind becomes ulcerated, peevish, and grumbling, and is wounded by the least occurrence. (Plutarch)

-4-

Awakening

To those who are awake, there is one ordered universe, whereas in sleep each person turns away from the world to one of his own. (Heraclitus) Arise, awake, and stop not until the Goal is reached! (Upanishads) It is time now for us to rise from sleep. (St. Benedict) O my blessed beloved, awake! Why do you sleep in ignorance. (Kabir) You have not known what you are. You have slumbered upon yourself all your life…Whoever you are! Claim your own. (Walt Whitman) You are destined for enlightenment. Cooperate with your destiny, don’t go against it, don’t thwart it. Allow it to fulfill itself. (Nisargadatta)

Life is a series of awakenings. (Sivananda) When man awakens, he finds that he is part of the one great Reality and he realizes his union with all things. (Paramananda)

-5- The unsurpassed, profound, and wondrous Dharma is rarely met with, even in a hundred, thousand, million kalpas. Now I can see and hear it, accept and maintain it. May I unfold the meaning of the Tathagate’s (the Buddha’s) truth. (The Lotus Sutra) The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred million to a poetic or divine life. (Henry David Thoreau) Very few men, in all God’s creation, ever see Him and realize Him. Lord Krishna told that one in a thousand walks toward Him; and if a thousand such ones were found, then from them only one will take what is offered; and if a thousand of those were found, only one from them will realize it. In hundreds of thousands, there is none; in millions, there may be one. (Sant Kirpal Singh)

Lord Krishna

You cannot awake a person pretending to be asleep (Navajo proverb) Every awakened man or woman knows that the object of life is to realize God. (Papa Ramdas) The greatest purpose of human life is that one should know one’s Self and know God, and all the rest is mere dissipation. (Sant Kirpal Singh) To know the sweetness of the Infinite within us, that is the cause, the reason, the purpose, the only purpose of our being. (Nicholas of Cusa) God realization does not begin in a cave high atop the Himalayas. It begins in the pots and pans of the kitchen. Treat all of your tasks, however small, as opportunities to see God and serve Him. (Sivananda)

-6- It were better to live one single day in the pursuit of understanding and meditation, than to live a hundred years in ignorance and restraint. (Buddha)

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. (George Bernard Shaw) It is as if a king had sent you to a country to carry out one special, specific task. You go to the country and you perform a hundred other tasks, but if you have not performed the task you were sent for, it is as if you have performed nothing at all. So man has come into the world for a particular task, and that is his purpose. If he doesn’t perform it, he will have done nothing. (Rumi) He is born to no purpose, who, having the rare privilege of human birth, is unable to realize God in this life. (Ramakrishna)

Ramakrishna

There is no one in this world who is not looking for God. Everyone is trudging along with as much dignity, courage and style as they possibly can. (Hafiz) To sacrifice one’s spiritual future just for a few days dancing to the mind’s tune - is this intelligent? (Sant Kirpal Singh)

-7- Without a connection with the All Sustainer, our life is wasted; nothing remains but preparation for the return to the field of action. (Sant Kirpal Singh)

He who barters away his life in the human body in exchange for the dross, the sense pleasures and other worldly objects, is the most pathetic of fools, for he is digging a pit into which he will inevitably fall himself. With his own razor, he is trying to cut his throat. (Baba Sawan Singh)

Baba Sawan Singh

Bodily Fascination

Outward beauty, loveliness of form, charm of personality, whether it is yours or possessed by another, is of no lasting worth. Be not allured by this false show. Be not deluded by these transitory qualities. Handsome or ugly, fair or dark, delicate or coarse, exquisite or plain in appearance, all the forms that you behold are born of dust. They are dolls of clay. They are fleeting forms that will soon vanish and be no more. They are exactly like garments that we have purchased at the vanity-fair of this world, but which have to be discarded before we depart. Your aim in life should be to transcend them. (Baba Sawan Singh)

-8-

Discriminate and you will find that even the body of the most beautiful person consists of bones, fat, and other disagreeable things. Why should one give up God and direct his attention to such things? Why should he forget God for their sake? (Ramakrishna) All this is illusion and mirage that deceives by its false glitter. Beholding its glamour, men believe it to be real. (Dadu Dayal) Do not let the false delights of a deceptive world deceive you. (Clare of Assisi) Little by little God takes away human beauty: little by little the sapling withers. Go, recite “To whomever we give a length of days, we also cause them to decline.” Seek the spirit; don’t set your heart on bones! (Rumi)

Jelaluddin Rumi

The body is not a home but an inn and that only briefly. (Seneca) Things divine cannot be obtained by those whose intellectual eye is directed to the body. (Proclus)

Change

No matter what your past has been - stop now! View the facts and start afresh. (Sant Kirpal Singh) One has to outlive and forget one’s past whatever it be… (Sant Kirpal Singh)

-9-

You are advised to draw a thick curtain over the past and just forget everything which has since passed as no amount of repentance or resentment can do it. You must start a new pattern of life. (Sant Kirpal Singh) If we live recklessly when our hair is black, at least when it turns to white we should give some thought to how we are living, and what it will avail us. (Sant Kirpal Singh) There must be a spiritual renewal of your thoughts and attitudes. (Saint Paul)

Saint Paul

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. (Saint Paul) Forget the past. The vanished lives of all men are dark with many shames. Human conduct is ever unreliable until man is anchored in the Divine. Everything in the future will improve if you are making a spiritual effort now. (Sri Yukteswar) Because of your love I have broken with my past. (Rumi) During eight and twenty years of prayer, I spent more than eighteen in that strife and contention which arose out of my attempt to reconcile God and the world. (Saint Teresa of Avila)

St. Teresa of Avila

-10- On the one hand I felt the call of God; on the other, I continued to follow the world. All the things of God gave me great pleasure, but I was held captive by those of the world. I might have been said to be trying to reconcile these two extremes, to bring contraries together: the spiritual life on the one hand and worldly satisfactions, pleasures, and pastimes on the other. (Saint Teresa of Avila) Though she (Saint Teresa of Avila) was resolved to belong entirely to God, she knew not how to shake herself free from the world: and at times she persuaded herself that she could enjoy both, which ended mostly, as she says, in complete enjoyment of neither. (Fray Luis de Leon) So did my two wills, one new, the other old, one spiritual, the other carnal, fight within me and by their discord undo my soul. (Saint Augustine)

Saint Augustine

I was held back by mere trifles, the most paltry inanities, all my old attachments. They plucked at my garments of flesh and whispered: “Are you going to dismiss us? From this moment we shall never be with you again, for ever and ever. From this moment you will never again be allowed to do this thing, or that, for evermore.” (Saint Augustine) All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. (Anatole France) Rationalizations enter the mind - perhaps the thought: “Won’t God be just as pleased with me if I live a good, moral life? Must I give up everything human - everything normal, and be left in the end with, perhaps, nothing?” (Yogananda)

-11- Even though we know that the bondage of the mind is the cause of suffering, somehow we don’t want to become free from its clutches, because our mental fantasies, ideas, and concepts have created our life. When the time comes to free ourselves from these things, we feel we are going to flounder, we feel we will lose the reality that we have known for so long and have grown so accustomed to. We get scared, and even though we know the bondage of the mind creates so much suffering, we don’t want to be free of it. Gurumayi)

Gurumayi

In the quest for Divine Bliss, there lingers subconsciously in the mind a certain apprehension: the fear of bereavement, of losing one’s old associations and familiar sense enjoyments; most of all, of losing one’s own self-identity. (Yogananda) Change, even change for the better, is often approached with apprehension. In giving up something people think, “Will I be left with - nothing?” It takes courage to renounce the known for the unknown. It is not easy even to renounce a familiar pain for an unknown, and therefore uncertain, happiness. (Yogananda)

Paramahansa Yogananda

There is nothing permanent except change. (Heraclitus) The important thing is this: to be ready at any moment to sacrifice what you are for what you could become. (Charles Dubois)

-12- I persist on praising not the life I lead, but that which I ought to lead. I follow it at a mighty distance, crawling. (Seneca) Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. (George Bernard Shaw) Such is the state of life that none are happy but by the anticipation of change. (Sameul Johnson) The desire to change the direction of your life is one of the surest signs of grace…For a while you may not know the direction in which to go. But you will know without doubt that the direction you have been going in is wrong. (Eknath Easwaran) We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise, we harden. (Johann Goethe) You are not here to change the world, the world is here to change you. (Shantidasa) The only worthwhile accomplishments are not those we achieve outwardly but the victories we win over ourselves. (Yogananda) I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; the hardest victory is over self. (Aristotle) One who conquers himself is greater than another who conquers a thousand times a thousand men on the battlefield. (Buddha)

-13-

Character

When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost. (German proverb) Your character is the result of your conduct. (Aristotle)

Aristotle

Character is simply a habit long continued. (Plutarch)

Plutarch

Character is the result of two things - mental attitude and the way we spend our time. (Elbert Hubbard) Remember this – that very little is needed to make a happy life. It is all in your way of thinking. (Marcus Aurelius) Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are. (John Wooden)

-14-

Choice

Choices lead to action; action forms habits; habits solidify into character. (Sathya Sai Baba) If a man who beholds a lesser happiness beholds a greater one, let him leave aside the lesser to gain the greater. (Buddha) Perennial joy or passing pleasure? This is the choice man is to make always. The wise man recognizes this, but not the ignorant. The first welcomes what leads to abiding joy, though painful at the time. The latter run, goaded by their senses, after what seems immediate pleasure. (Katha Upanishad) Try to realize, and truly realize, that what stands between you and a different life are matters of responsible choice. (Gary Zukav) As you choose to empower yourself, the temptations that you challenge will surface again and again. Each time that you challenge it, you gain power and it loses power. (Gary Zukav) You’re cheating on God. If all you want is your own way, flirting with the world every chance you get, you end up enemies of God and His Way. (Saint James)

Beware! Don’t allow yourself to do what you know is wrong, relying on the thought, “Later I will repent and ask God’s forgiveness.” (Rumi)

-15- Make up your mind whether you would like to conform to the dictates of your mind or to the commandments of the Master. The choice lies in your own hands; you are free to choose; no one else can make the choice for you. (Sant Kirpal Singh) In every affair consider what precedes and what follows, and then undertake it. (Epictetus) How much better to pursue a straight course and eventually reach that destination where the things that are pleasant and the things that are honorable finally become, for you, the same. (Seneca) We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them. (Kahlil Gibran) Life is a series of choices and sometimes your only choice is what your attitude will be. (Shantideva) To know and yet not to do is in fact not to know. (Wang Yang Ming)

Wang Yang Ming

Consciousness means freedom from attachment. You realize that the only thing you have to do is to keep yourself really straight, and then do whatever it is you do. (Baba Ram Das) You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. (William Blake)

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Courage

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crisis maintain their neutrality. (Dante) To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice. (Confucius)

Confucius

Procrastination is just another way of concealing cowardice. (Shantideva) A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer. (Ralph Waldo Emerson) To persevere, trusting in what hopes one has, is courage. The coward despairs. (Euripides) Fortune favors the bold. (Virgil) When there is no adversary, what avails thy courage? (Rumi) A man with outward courage dares to die; A man with inward courage dares to live. (Lao-tzu) Have courage to use your own reason! That is the motto of enlightenment. (Immanuel Kant)

-17- You cannot discover new horizons unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore. (Anonymous) The weak in courage are strong in cunning. (William Blake)

William Blake

Criticism

One who permits himself or herself to be disturbed by what others say and do, is without question one who is still controlled by the ego and has yet to conquer the self, and learn the rudiments of spirituality. (Sant Kirpal Singh)

Sant Kirpal Singh

In this vast creation, everyone is gifted with an individual perception. The heredity, the environment and the teachings inculcated, all combine to make one what he is. We cannot blame anyone for thinking differently in his own way. Everyone has his own temperament and his own way of thinking. They must differ and they do differ vehemently. There is no help for it. It is, on the other hand, the sign of sentient life. We must not therefore, on that account, cross swords with them. (Sant Kirpal Singh)

-18-

The worst of all bad habits is to criticize others. (Sant Kirpal Singh)

Can one behave the same inwardly, whatever the circumstances? Can one's behavior spring from within and not depend on what people think of you or how they look at you? (J. Krishnamurti) People live too much vicariously, in the opinions of others. Your primary concern should be how to win the Lord, not how to please your fellowman. (Yogananda) As a solid rock cannot be moved by the wind, the wise are not shaken by praise or blame. (Buddha) If instead of seeing faults in others, we look within ourselves, we are loving God. (Meher Baba) Judge not, and you shall not be judged; condemn not and you shall not be condemned; forgive and you shall be forgiven. (Jesus Christ) And why do you behold the mote that is in your brother's eye, and do not consider the beam in your own eye? (Jesus Christ)

Jesus Christ

Speak evil of no one. (Mohammed) Worrying about the faults of others is an unnecessary addition to the worry we have over our own faults. (Hazrat Inayat Khan) Whatever one of us blames in another, each one will find in his own heart. (Seneca)

-19-

Many of the faults you see in others, dear reader, are your own nature reflected in them. (Rumi) The flies seek filth, the bees seek honey. I will shun the habit of the flies and follow that of the bees. I will refrain from finding faults in others and only look for the good which is in them. (Hindu vow)

People with opinions just go around bothering one another. (Buddha)

Death and Dying

The gods conceal from men the happiness of death, that they may endure life. (Lucan) Who knows but that this life is really death, and whether death is not what men call life? (Euripides) Death is for many the gate of hell; but we are inside on the way out, not on the outside on the way in. (George Bernard Shaw) Life is going forth, death is returning home. (Lao-tzu) Your brother has not lost the light of day, but has obtained a more enduring Light. He has not left us, but has gone before us. (Seneca)

-20- Death is nothing but a gateway to birth. Nothing that lives ever dies, it only changes form. When a man’s body is weary the soul leaves the body to receive newer and fresher garments. And so on goes this great play of God - from eternity to eternity. (Guru Nanak)

Guru Nanak

Death is the bright side of life. (Alfred Lord Tennyson)

Never say about anything, “I have lost it,” but only “I have given it back.” Is your child dead? It has been given back. Is your wife dead? She has been returned. (Epictetus)

We die into this world and are born back into the oneness. (Taoist saying)

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because dawn has come. (Tagore)

Death is the temporary end of a temporary phenomenon. (Buddha)

After death, the soul goes to the next world bearing in mind the subtle impressions of its deeds, and after reaping their harvest returns again to this world of action. (The Upanishads) No university will teach you how to live so that when the time of dying comes, you can say: “I lived well, I do not need to live again.” (Nisargadatta) Death is a punishment to some, to some a gift, and to many a favor. (Seneca) Death is no bugbear; it is the name given to a change which comes when one leaves the coarse atmosphere of the earth and enters a finer one of Light. Something like the sun setting in one place and rising in another. (Sant Kirpal Singh)

-21- Death is a tax the soul must pay for having a name and form. (Hazrat Inayat Khan)

Hazrat Inayat Khan

The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity. (Seneca)

Our death is our wedding with eternity. (Rumi)

The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation. (Hermann Hesse)

Death is like an arrow that is already in flight, and your life lasts only until it reaches you. (Hermes)

All days travel toward death; the last one reaches it. (Montaigne)

The hour which gives us life begins to take it away. (Seneca)

Seeing death as the end of life is like seeing the horizon as the end of the ocean. (David Searls)

What is death? Either a transition or an end. I am not afraid of coming to an end, this being the same as never having become; nor of transition, for I shall never be in confinement quite so cramped anywhere else as I am here. (Seneca)

I am making my last effort to return that which is divine in me to that which is divine in the universe. (Plotinus on his deathbed)

-22-

A man of discrimination and wisdom is not afraid of death. He knows that death is the gate of life. Death to him is no longer a skeleton bearing a sword to cut the thread of life, but rather an angel who has a golden key to unlock for him the door to a wider, fuller and happier existence. (Sivananda)

Death is a golden key that opens the palace of eternity. (John Milton) Even if death were to fall upon you today like lightning, you must be ready to die without sadness and regret, without any residue of clinging for what is left behind. Remaining in the recognition of the absolute view, you should leave this life like an eagle soaring up into the blue sky. (Dilgo Rinpoche)

The ancient masters slept without dreams and woke up without worries. Their food was plain. Their breath came from deep inside them. They didn’t cling to life, weren’t anxious about death. They emerged without desire and reentered without resistance. They came easily; they went easily. They didn’t forget where they were from; they didn’t ask where they were going. They took everything as it came, gladly, and walked into death without fear. They accepted life as a gift, and they handed it back gratefully. (Chuang-tzu)

-23-

You should strive for a readiness to die! Be certain and ready; when the time comes, you will have no fear and no regret. (Milarepa)

Milarepa

In reality, there is no death because you are not the body. Let the body be there or not be there, your existence is always there; it is eternal…(Nisargadatta) The dead are indeed happy, having gotten rid of the incubus of the body; the dead do not grieve. Do men fear sleep? No, they court it and prepare for it. (Ramana Maharshi) Death is not a deplorable event; it is the journey’s end, the owner getting out of the car when the time is up and the goal is reached. It is a consummation, a happy conclusion, or at least it ought to be, if only all are wise enough to treat it as such and be prepared for it. (Sathya Sai Baba)

Just as a well spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well used brings happy death. (Leonardo da Vinci)

Leonardo da Vinci

I see clearly that there are two deaths: to cease loving and being loved is unbearable. But to cease to live is of no consequence. (Voltaire) The soul is immortal and clothed in many bodies successively. (Plato)

-24-

It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection. (Voltaire) I am confident that there truly is such a thing as living again, that the living spring from the dead, and that the souls of the dead are in existence. (Socrates) Death in itself is nothing; but we fear to be we know not what, we know not where. (John Dryden)

Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short, but when we have had our swing of pleasures, our fill of fruit, and our swelter of heat, we say we have had our day. (Ralph Waldo Emerson) The first sign of love to God is not to be afraid of death, and to be always waiting for it. For death unites the friend to his Friend - the seeker to the object which he seeks. (Al Ghazzali)

If I die, don’t say that he died. Say he was dead, became alive, and was taken by the Beloved. (Rumi)

Rumi

-25-

The body, like a mother, is pregnant with the spirit-child: death is the labor of birth. All the spirits who have passed over are waiting to see how that proud spirit shall be born. (Rumi) Each departed friend is a magnet that attracts us to the next world. (Jean Paul Richter) While we are mourning the loss of our friend, others are rejoicing to meet him behind the veil. (John Taylor) After you die, you wear what you are. (Saint Teresa of Avila) Before we know it our life is finished and it is time to die. If we lack the foundation of a stable practice, we go to death helplessly, in fear and anguish. (Kalu Rinpoche)

Shiva

Awareness of death is the very bedrock of the path. Until you have developed this awareness, all other practices are obstructed. (The Dalai Lama) The longings that a person feels when alive, which remain fixed in his heart, come to mind at the moment of death. (Jnaneshwar) Your mind state at the time you draw your last breath is crucial, for upon this hinges the subsequent direction and embodiment of the life force. (Roshi Philip Kapleau)

Wherever our desire is, we shall go there. That is why a person’s thought should be on God at the time of death. (Sant Kirpal Singh)

-26-

Death, the awe-inspiring and heart-rending death, is to me a harbinger of joyous life, and I welcome it fully. (Kabir) Death plucks my ear and says, “Live - I am coming.” (Virgil)

Desire

If the mind could throw away all the worldly desires this moment, the soul would go up like a shot, instantaneously. (Baba Sawan Singh) Your inability to concentrate properly is due to your worldly desires, which must be brought under control till you reach the point when love of God becomes an all-consuming passion, and you consider it the be-all and end-all of your existence. (Baba Sawan Singh)

Baba Sawan Singh

Riches or poverty depends on the absence or presence of desires, respectively. He who has no desires is the richest, and the so-called richest is the poorest if his desires are not fulfilled. He who does not need anything is a sovereign. (Baba Sawan Singh)

-27- Bright and luminous as you are…you went to the world of darkness, and engaged in combat with it; and the world of darkness obscured your Light, and encompassed you with darkness, and blinded you, and made you lose sight of all that you had seen, and forget all that you had known, and in the end, you were captured and held prisoner. (Hermes)

Hermes

Urged by desire, I wandered in the streets of good and evil. I gained nothing except feeding the fire of desire. As long as in me remains the breath of life, help me, for Thou alone can hear my prayer. (Ansari of Herat) If you spent one-tenth of the time you devoted to distractions like chasing women or making money to spiritual practice, you would be enlightened in a few years. (Ramakrishna to a disciple) It is easy to keep things at a distance; it is hard to be naturally beyond them. (Bunan) If you can disentangle yourself from your selfish self all heavenly spirits will stand ready to serve you. If you can finally hunt down your own beastly self you have the right to claim Solomon’s kingdom. You are that blessed soul who belongs to the garden of paradise! Is it fair to let yourself fall apart in a shattered house? You are the bird of happiness in the magic of existence! What a pity when you let yourself be chained and caged. But if you can break free from this dark prison named body soon you will see you are the sage and the fountain of life! (Rumi) As a bird tied by the leg, when it starts to rise upwards, is pulled back to earth by the string, so the mind which has not yet attained desirelessness…is pulled back to the earth by desires. (Saint Maximus)

-28- When will you find God? When all your desires for other things are finished. When you realize that the only thing worth having is Him. When every thought, every feeling is drenched with the love of God. (Yogananda)

Yogananda

I was swept up to Thee by Thy beauty, and torn away from Thee by my own weight. (Saint Augustine)

And I marveled to find that at last I loved you and not some phantom instead of you; and I did not hesitate to enjoy my God, but was ravished to you by your beauty. Yet soon was I torn away from you again by my weight, and fell again with torment to lower things. Still, the memory of you remained with me and I knew without doubt that it was you to whom I should cleave; though I was not yet such as could cleave to you. (Saint Augustine) Desires go on increasing and burning more fiercely as they are fed. The more you yield to desire, the more dominant it becomes in your life. It does not matter the desire, the more you try to satisfy desire, the more you become captivated and enslaved by it. (Ramana Maharshi) Indulging in one's desires in the hope of transcending them is like attempting to extinguish a fire by pouring kerosene on it. (Lakshmana) Fiery lust is not diminished by indulging it, but inevitably by leaving it ungratified. As long as you are laying logs on the fire, the fire will burn. When you withhold the wood, the fire dies, and God carries the water! (Rumi) The path is smooth that leadeth onto danger. (William Shakespeare)

-29-

Pleasure is the bait of sin. (Plato)

Plato

Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. (Jesus Christ) Out of a forward will lust had sprung; and lust pampered had become custom; and custom indulged had become necessity. These were the links of the chain; this is the bondage in which I was bound. (Saint Augustine) Of all longings and desires none is stronger than sex. Sex as a desire has no equal. (Buddha) What a mistake to suppose that the passions are strongest in youth. The passions are not stronger, but the control over them is weaker. (Edward Bulwer-Lytton) Desire grows in strength if you follow it, but dies if you turn from it and abstain. Desire is slavery; renunciation is freedom. (Hermes) Although your desire tastes sweet, doesn’t the Beloved desire you to be desireless? The life of lovers is in death: you will not win the Beloved’s heart unless you lose your own. (Rumi) Kill the snake of desire in the beginning; or watch out: your snake will become a dragon! (Rumi) No one is free who is a slave to the flesh. (Seneca) The greatest wealth is a poverty of desires. (Seneca)

-30- It is difficult to overcome one's passions, and it is impossible to satisfy them. (Marquerite De la Sabiere) It is much easier to suppress a first desire than to satisfy those that follow. (Francois La Rochefoucauld) Do not become attached to the things you like; do not maintain an aversion to the things you dislike. Sorrow, fear and bondage come from likes and dislikes. (Buddha) Those who want fewest things are nearest to the gods. (Socrates)

Socrates

My belief is that to have no wants is divine. (Socrates) In God alone is there primordial and true delight, and in all our delights it is this delight that we are seeking. (Saint Bonaventure) The desire for perfection…is that desire which always makes every pleasure appear incomplete, for there is no joy or pleasure so great in this life that it can quench the thirst in our soul. (Dante) The more one yields to desire, the more insatiable it will become. (Mahabharata) To identify with any desire keeps you separate from God. (Vivekananda) When the one thought of God saturates your mind, naturally all other desires will disappear from it. (Papa Ramdas) Nothing troubles you for which you do not desire. (Cicero)

-31-

Determination

Come what may - let my body rot, let my bones be reduced to ashes - I will not get up from here until I have found the way beyond decay and death. (Buddha) There is nothing that cannot be achieved by firm determination. (Japanese proverb) An invincible determination can accomplish almost anything and in this lies the great distinction between great men and little men. (Thomas Fuller) In mighty enterprises, it is enough to have had the determination. (Sextus Propertius) Do not blame karma, or anybody else, for what you are. You can undo what has been done, through the exercise of a determined will. (Papa Ramdas) Those who really seek the path to enlightenment dictate terms to their mind. They then proceed with strong determination. (Buddha) Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing. (Abraham Lincoln) Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will. (Mahatma Gandhi) To awaken to the Divine Truth requires great energy and dynamic will power. We cannot awaken from the cosmic dream by wishful thinking. (Yogananda)

The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will. (Vince Lombardi)

-32-

Discipline

The spiritual path is a difficult one and requires a rigorous self-discipline. (Sant Kirpal Singh) “Discipline” is a difficult word for most of us. It conjures up images of somebody standing over you with a stick, telling you that you’re wrong. But self-discipline is different. It’s the skill of seeing through the hollow shouting of your own impulses and piercing their secret. They have no power over you. It’s all a show, a deception. Your urges scream and bluster at you; they cajole; they coax; they threaten; but they really carry no stick at all. You give in out of habit. You give in because you never really bother to look beyond the threat. It is all empty back there. There is only one way to learn this lesson though. The words on this page won’t do it. But look within and watch the stuff coming up - restlessness, anxiety, impatience, pain - just watch it come up and don’t get involved. Much to your surprise, it will simply go away. It rises, it passes away. As simple as that. There is another word for self-discipline. It is patience. (Henepola Gunaratana) Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself. (Abraham Joshua Heschel) Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power. (Seneca) Self-conquest is the greatest of victories. (Plato) No conflict is so severe as his who labors to subdue himself. (Thomas a’ Kempis) What lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do. (Aristotle) The disciplined man masters thoughts by stillness and emotions by calmness. (Lao-tzu) There never has been, and cannot be, a good life without self-control. (Leo Tolstoy)

-33- Remember that there is always a limit to self-indulgence, but none to self-restraint. (Mahatma Gandhi)

Mahatma Gandhi

No one is free who is not master of himself. (Shakespeare) Don’t allow your animal nature to rule your reason. (Rumi) The road to pleasure is downhill and very easy, so that one does not walk but is dragged along; the way of self-control is uphill, toilsome no doubt, but exceedingly profitable. (Philo) If you have cravings, don’t indulge them. Let them come and go, come and go. Don’t become their prisoner; don’t become their slave. (Vasishtha)

Brother, stand the pain; escape the poison of your impulses. (Rumi) Let’s ask God to help us to self-control: for one who lacks it, lacks His grace. (Rumi) The intelligent desire self-control; children want candy! (Rumi)

Rumi

If men live decently it is because discipline saves their very lives for them. (Sophocles)

-34-

Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire. (Epictetus) I believe in self-control, not coercion. Coercion is based on oppression, and results in fear and hatred. Self-control requires courage, and may be induced by love. We will do many things for those whom we love which we would not ordinarily do - which we would not ordinarily have the strength of mind and power to do. How many habits have we been able to break through love, which we would never have had the strength to break without love? And when the love is universal love, all habits which are detrimental, either to the individual or to the social order, will be dissolved in its light. (Meher Baba)

Meher Baba

Be gentle to all and stern with yourself. (Saint Teresa of Avila) Discipline is simply a matter of doing what we must, without wasting time or energy worrying about whether we feel like it. (Zen Soup) Discipline yourself only to yield to love. (Henry David Thoreau) If you can win complete mastery over self, you will easily master all else. To triumph over self is the perfect victory. (Thomas a Kempis) Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities. (Bertrand Russell) Discipline divorced from wisdom is not true discipline, but merely the meaningless following of custom, which is a disguise for ignorance. (Tagore)

-35-

Doubt

Doubt, the ruthless hunter, lurks within your body; his arrow has pierced the flawless diamond of your soul. (Kabir)

Kabir

Doubts arise because of the absence of surrender. (Ramana Maharshi) Let go of the things of which you are in doubt for the things in which there is no doubt. (Mohammed) Doubting is truly a component of man’s worst nature. It clips the wings of joy; it dampens enthusiasm, it tarnished hope. Such men cannot attain the goal even at the end of a thousand births. (Sathya Sai Baba) One of the ego’s favorite paths of resistance is to fill you with doubt. (Ram Das) Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt. (William Shakespeare)

William Shakespeare

-36-

Effort

When the mind has gone in, it tastes sweetness such as it has never before tasted in worldly objects. Then it becomes obedient and faithful. So long as it has not tasted that sweetness, there is no greater enemy. The primary factor in this success is the effort of the disciple. (Baba Sawan Singh) Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory. (Mahatma Gandhi) All I can do is engage with complete sincerity. Then, whatever happens, there is no regret. (The Dalai Lama) Hope is effort, not wish; effort to make it so; not wish that it may be so. (Gurdjieff)

George I.Gurdjieff

Great souls have will, feeble ones have only wishes. (ancient Chinese proverb) Excellence is never granted to man but as the reward of labor. (Joshua Reynolds) Without labor nothing prospers. (Sophocles) Heaven never helps the man who will not act. (Sophocles) In all human affairs there are efforts, and there are results, and the strength of the effort is the measure of the result. (Zen Soup)

-37- To believe in the Tao is easy; to keep the Tao is difficult. (Lao-tzu)

Lao-tzu

I exhort you, brothers: remember, all things that come into being must pass away. Strive earnestly! (Buddha) If a life of ease and merriment led to God, would anyone be without Him? (Guru Amar Das)

Guru Amar Das

Failure

One falls often, no doubt, but one becomes a good rider only after many a fall. (Sant Kirpal Singh) To fall in sin is manly, but to remain there is devilish. (Sant Kirpal Singh) A saint is a sinner who never gave up. (Yogananda)

-38-

The worst sin is to call yourself a sinner. For in that very thought you open the door, and invite sin to enter your mind. (Yogananda) Do not brood over failures, defects and mistakes. They will weaken your "will". Just reflect for a while why you have failed in the attempt and try to be careful in the second attempt. (Sivananda) God doesn't mind your imperfections: He minds your indifference. (Yogananda) One mistake after another is also true practice. (Dogen) In the archer there is a resemblance to the mature person. When he misses the bulls-eye, he turns and seeks the reason for his failure in himself. (Confucius) As a child learning to walk falls a thousand times before he can stand, and after that falls again and again until at last he can walk, so are we as little children before God. (Hazrat Inayat Khan) The spiritual path is one of falling on your face, getting up, brushing yourself off, turning and looking sheepishly at God and then taking the next step. (Sri Aurobindo)

Sri Aurobindo

Many of the insights of the saint stem from his experiences as a sinner. (Eric Hoffer) Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. (Confucius) To conduct great matters and never commit a fault is above the force of human nature. (Plutarch)

-39- There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to Truth: not going all the way, and not starting. (Buddha) Defeat is not so bad as the admission of defeat. (Baba Sawan Singh) There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat save your own inherent weakness of purpose. (Richard Pape) The men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try to do nothing and succeed. (Lloyd Jones) In great attempts it is glorious even to fail. (Vince Lombardi) Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure. (George Eliot) If thou art a man, admire those who attempt great things, even though they fail. (Seneca) Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. (Thomas Edison) Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent. (Marilyn vos Savent) Defeat never comes to any man until he admits it. (Josephus Daniels) In this world whatever is gained is gained only by self-effort; where failure is encountered, it is seen that there has been a slackness in self-effort. (Yoga Vasistha) Failure is the foundation of success, and the means by which it is achieved. (Lao-tzu) He that is down need fear no fall. (John Bunyan) To dry one’s eyes and laugh at a fall, and baffled, get up and begin again. (Robert Browning)

-40-

Faith

Faith must have adequate evidence, else it is mere superstition. (Archibald A. Hodge) Faith begins as an experiment and ends as an experience. (W.R. Inge) Faith expressed in action is a sure means of realization. Faith is not blind. It is the willingness to try. (Nisargadatta) The principle part of faith is patience. (George MacDonald) Faith is the belief in the unknown. Faith heals, faith creates, faith works wonders, faith moves mountains. Faith is the searchlight for God-finding. (Sivananda) He who has no faith in himself can never have faith in God. (Vivekananda)

Swami Vivekananda

Faith…is the resolve to live as if certain things were true, in the confident assurance that they are true, and that we shall one day find out for ourselves that they are true. (W.R. Inge) Faith is to believe what we do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what we believe. (Saint Augustine) Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark. (Tagore)

-41-

God

Something unknown is doing we don’t know what. (anonymous) The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything. (Julian of Norwich)

Julian of Norwich

When the veil is removed, God can be experienced everywhere in full. (Sathya Sai Baba) When you have succeeded in enshrining God within your heart, you will see Him everywhere. (Swami Shivananda) God’s absence is an illusion. (Abraham Joshua Heschel) God is equally present in all creatures; but all creatures are not equally aware of the fact. (Aldoux Huxley) O God, you seek those who hide from you, and hide from those who seek you! (Saint Augustine) Do you need proof of God? Does one light a torch to see the sun? (Chinese proverb) Do not despise the world, for the world too is God. (Mohammed) God is a circle whose center is everywhere, and its circumference nowhere. (Empedocles)

-42- Man can cease to become man, and become God; but man cannot be God and man at the same time. (Plotinus)

Plotinus

God becomes man, that man might become God. (Saint Athanasius) Nothing is void of God; He Himself fills His work. (Seneca)

Seneca

The whole creation is the temple of God. There is no place where He is not. In minerals life is sleeping; in plants life is dreaming; in birds and animals life is awakening; and in man life is awake. (Sant Kirpal Singh) Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool. (Ralph Waldo Emerson) God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. (Jesus Christ) God is subtle, but he is not malicious. (Albert Einstein) God has created the world in play…It is God Himself who is sporting in the form of man. (Ramakrishna)

-43-

God’s Will

All things are manifestations of His Will; but His Will is beyond description. By His Will is matter quickened into life; by His Will is greatness obtained; by His Will some are born high and others low. By His Will are men’s joys and sorrows ordained; by His Will the pious obtain salvation; by His Will the impious wander in endless transmigration. All exist under His Will, and nothing stands outside. One attuned with His Will, is wholly freed from ego. (Guru Nanak)

Guru Nanak

Not an atom moves except by God’s Will. (Ramana Maharshi) There is a divine plan behind everything, and if we allow ourselves to be used by that Unseen Force, as good instruments, many things can happen in a mysterious, miraculous way. (Satchidananda)

Swami Satchidananda

Live in the world like a dead leaf. As a dead leaf is carried by the wind into a house or on the roadside and has no choice of its own, so let the wind of the Divine Will blow you wherever it chooses. (Ramakrishna)

-44-

To live in the world or to leave it depends on the will of God. Therefore, work, leaving everything to Him. What else can you do? (Ramakrishna) True worship of God consists quite simply in doing God’s will, but his sort of worship has never been to man’s taste. (Soren Kierkegaard) We should ask nothing and refuse nothing, but leave ourselves in the arms of Divine Providence without wasting time in any desire, except to will what God wills of us. (Saint Francis de Sales) Nothing comes to pass but what God appoints. Our fate is decreed, and things do not happen by chance, but every man’s portion of joy and sorrow is predetermined. (Seneca) It is not everyone who says to me “Lord Lord!” who will get into the Kingdom of Heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father. (Jesus Christ)

Jesus Christ

It is best to trust in God, not in our dim reasoning and uncertain conjectures. (Philo) Whatever Heaven ordains is best. (Confucius) The superior man lives quietly and calmly, waiting for the will of Heaven, while the average man does what is full of risk, looking out for turns of luck. (Confucius) Do nothing by self-will but rather conform to heaven’s will, and everything will be done for you. (Lao-tzu) It is for us to make the effort. The result is always in God’s hands. (Mahatma Gandhi)

-45-

Grace

The breeze of grace is always blowing on you. You have to open the sails and your boat will move forward. (Ramakrishna) The human body is like a boat, the first and foremost use of which is to carry us across the ocean of life and death to the shore of immortality. The Guru is the skillful helmsman; divine grace is the favorable wind. (Shirmad Bhagavatam) God's grace never descends upon a man who is a slave to lust. (Mahatma Gandhi) The sure sign of grace is …the desire to go against all selfish desires. (Eknath Easwaran) God is not partial. His grace is on all, the good and the evil, just as rains fall equally on all places. Whoever tills the land reaps the harvest. (Turiyananda) The soil is faithful to its trust: whatever you have sown in it, you reap the same. But until springtime brings the touch of God, the soil does not reveal its secrets. (Rumi) The world is full of remedies, but you have no remedies until God opens a window for you. (Rumi) I need more grace than I thought! (Rumi) Most people have many desires which they want to fulfill. But some rare people tell God: "I want nothing. Make me desireless, that is my only desire." Such a one will be a fit instrument to receive grace. The one who will get the most grace is the one who is completely desireless. (Annamalai Swami) It is the grace of God that helps those who do everything that lies within their power to achieve that which is beyond their power. (Abraham Joshua Heschel)

-46-

Prayers, humble and sincere, help in establishing a harmony between man's mind and God's grace. (Sant Kirpal Singh)

Sant Kirpal Singh

The efforts of the disciple and the grace of the Master go hand in hand. Effort is rewarded with grace, and grace brings more effort. When a laborer gets his wages after a day's work, is the Master so unjust that He will keep back His grace from a diligent disciple? (Baba Sawan Singh) By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God. (Saint Paul)

Gratitude

Ingratitude is the greatest evil. What has God given us? All that we need and much more. Have we ever offered a thanksgiving prayer for what He has done and the bounteous gifts supplied by Him? If we fulfill these conditions of truthfulness and contentment with a sense of gratefulness, He would not deny us anything for which we may happen to wish. (Sant Kirpal Singh)

Sant Kirpal Singh

-47-

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love. (Marcus Aurelius) The worship most acceptable to God comes from a thankful and cheerful heart. (Plutarch) Blessings are oftentimes not valued till they are gone. (Thomas Fuller) If the only prayer you say in your life is “Thank you,” that will suffice. (Meister Eckhart) The more you express outwardly your gratitude and thankfulness for what you have, the more you change your molecular vibration away from the dense energy into finer levels. (Sanaya Roman) The greatest saint in the world is not he who prays most or fasts most; it is not he who gives alms, or is most eminent for temperance, chastity or justice. It is he who is most thankful to God. (William Law) Ingratitude is the soul’s enemy…Like a hot, parching wind, it dries up the well-spring of holiness, the dew of mercy, and the streams of grace. (Saint Bernard)

Take full account of the excellencies which you possess, and in gratitude remember how you would hanker after them, if you had them not. (Marcus Aurelius)

Growth

When the fruit grows, the petals drop off themselves. So when divinity in you increases, the weakness of humanity will vanish. (Ramakrishna) Progress and growth are impossible if you always do things the way you’ve always done things. (Wayne Dyer)

-48-

It doesn’t matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop. (Confucius) Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid of standing still. (Chinese proverb) There are no windfalls as a general rule. You have to work your way up. Every one reaching the top step has ascended the steps below. (Sant Kirpal Singh) Master is pleased to see His children going along. He does not compare the man running with the child hopping along; He appreciates that hopping, too. (Sant Kirpal Singh) Everything on earth has its own time and its own season. (Ecclesiastes) Enlightenment must come little by little, otherwise it would overwhelm. (Idries Shah)

If we have ideas about how our practice should unfold, these will often get in the way, preventing us from honoring the phase that is actually with us. (Jack Kornfield) In this well ordered universe, the perfect vehicle for our spiritual growth and unfoldment is exactly our present situation. (Sevakram) Once I said to God, “How do you teach us?” And he replied, “If you were playing chess with someone who had infinite power and infinite knowledge and wanted to make you a master of the game, where would all the chess pieces be at every moment? Indeed, not only where he wanted them, but where all were best for your development; and that is every situation of one’s life.” (Saint John of the Cross)

-49-

Habits

Habits change into character. (Ovid) Men’s natures are alike; it is their habits that carry them far apart. (Confucius) We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit. (Aristotle) We cannot in a moment, get rid of habits of a lifetime. (Mahatma Gandhi) Habit, if not resisted, soon becomes necessity. (Saint Augustine) Habit is either the best of servants or the worst of masters. (Nathaniel Emmons) It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man’s life is made up of nothing but the habits he has accumulated during the first half. (Dostoyevsky) Building up character is building up of habits. The changing of character is a changing of habits. Habit is second nature. Character is first nature. ( Swami Sivananda) Once a habit demands something and its request is not fulfilled, the next time you will find it weaker. But once you fulfill its will, the next time you will find it fall on you with much greater force. (Isaac of Syria) Habits work more constantly and with greater force than reason. (John Locke) Habit is stronger than reason. (George Santayana) The mind is slow to unlearn what it has been long in learning. (Seneca) When habit is once formed, impulse is powerless against it. (George B. Cheever)

-50-

Ignorance

Such is the world, it is easily led away by nonsense; but when it hears of the Path of Truth, it rejects it as false. (Kabir) Not all spiritual paths lead to the harmonious Oneness. Indeed, most are detours and distractions, nothing more. (Lao-Tzu) During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. (George Orwell) It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. (J. Krishnamurti) Truth does not become error just because nobody believes it. (Mahatma Gandhi) If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. (Anatole France) In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place. (Mahatma Gandhi) A wise man in the company of those who are ignorant has been compared to a beautiful woman in the company of blind men. (Saadi) Degrade not truth by forcing it upon unwilling minds. (letters from the Masters of Wisdom) A fool always finds some greater fool to admire him. (Nicolas Boileau)

-51-

The Journey

A tree as big around as you can reach starts with a small seed; a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. (Lao-tzu)

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one least traveled by, and that has made all the difference. (Robert Frost)

You shall seek me and you shall find me. Because you seek me with all your heart, I will let myself be found. (Into Great Silence)

Like the sharp edge of a razor, the sages say, is the path. Narrow it is, and difficult to tread. (Upanishads) Not I, not anyone else, can travel that road for you. You must travel it yourself. (Walt Whitman)

Walt Whitman

There is no easy way from the earth to the stars. (Seneca)

-52- One cannot expect to become a saint without paying the price, and the price is much renunciation, much temptation, much struggle and persecution, and all sorts of sacrifice. (Mother Teresa) I know the path: it is straight and narrow. It is like the edge of a sword. I rejoice to walk on it. I weep when I slip. God’s word is: “He who strives never perishes.” I have implicit faith in that promise. Though, therefore, from my weakness I fail a thousand times, I shall not lose faith. (Mahatma Gandhi) The last laps of all paths are the same - surrender of the ego. (Ramana Maharshi) The path of the Masters is diametrically opposed to the path which the learned and the public follow. (Baba Sawan Singh) Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leads to destruction, and many there be who go that way, because straight is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leads to life, and few there be that find it. (Jesus Christ) What is the use of going over the old track again? You must make tracks into the unknown. (Henry David Thoreau)

Henry David Thoreau

The first step is what counts: First beginnings are hardest to make and as small and inconspicuous as they are potent in influence, but once they are made, it is easy to add to the rest. (Aristotle) And how, you ask, are we to walk the spiritual path? We answer: say little, and love much; give all; judge no man; aspire to all that is pure and good. (White Eagle)

-53-

These three things will help you: to eat less, sleep less and have mercy, forgiveness and love. (Sant Kirpal Singh) Those who seek the easy way do not seek the True Way. (Dogen)

Dogen

Karma

The world is a furnace in whose fires the soul is purified. (Baba Sawan Singh) Disease is due to past karma and disappears when the karma has run its course. (Baba Sawan Singh) The main events of life are the results of our past actions, and this is debt that stands against us; and like a debtor we should be happy when the debt is being paid off. (Baba Sawan Singh) If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap, whence every one must take an equal portion, most persons would be contented to take their own and depart. (Socrates) Not in the heavens above, nor in the farthest reaches of the sea, nor by transporting yourself to the remotest valleys of the mountains, will you be able to hide from the consequences of your own evil actions. Likewise, certain are the blessings growing out of your good actions. (Buddha)

-54- Good and evil do not befall men without reason. Heaven sends them happiness or misery according to their conduct. (Confucius) This discipline and rough treatment are a furnace to extract the silver from the dross. This testing purifies the gold by boiling the scum away. (Rumi) In the spiritual life, every cause is also an effect, and every effect is at the same time a cause. (Aldous Huxley) Every action, thought, and feeling is motivated by an intention, and that intention is a cause that exists as one with an effect. If we participate in the cause, it is not possible for us not to participate in the effect. In this most profound way, we are held responsible for our every action, thought, and feeling, which is to say, for our every intention. (Gary Zukav)

Chance is a word void of sense, nothing can exist without a cause. (Voltaire)

Voltaire

God does not play dice with the universe. (Albert Einstein) There is an old saying that though the mills of the gods grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly fine. That is only another way of saying that one can never escape his own karma. (Julian P. Johnson) We sow our thoughts, and we reap our actions; we sow our actions, and we reap our habits; we sow our habits, we reap our characters; we sow our characters and reap our destiny. (C.A. Hall)

-55- God is not to be fooled; a man reaps what he sows. If he sows seeds in the field of his lower nature, he will reap from it a harvest of corruption, but if he sows in the field of spirit, the spirit will bring him a harvest of eternal life. (Saint Paul) If you help others, you will be helped, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps in one hundred years, but you will be helped. Nature must pay off the debt. It is a mathematical law and all of life is mathematics. (George I. Gurdjieff) The acts of this life are the destiny of the next. (Hindu saying) The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole creator of all our adversities. (Sophocles)

Sophocles

Kindness

If we have helped even one person by removing a little misery from his day, we have done a great service. (Sant Kirpal Singh) The best portion of a good man’s life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness. (William Wordsworth) Thoughtfulness, the kindly regard for others, is the beginning of holiness. (Mother Teresa) You cannot do a kindness too soon because you never know how soon it will be too late. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

-56- Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. (Plato) If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each person’s life sorrows and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Nobody appears inferior to us when our heart is kindled with kindness. (Hazrat Inayat Khan) Kindness is the root of righteousness. Kindness is the enemy of cruelty, harshness, rudeness. It softens the heart. It opens the door to heaven. (Swami Sivananda)

Swami Sivananda

Have benevolence toward all living beings, joy at the sight of the virtuous, compassion and sympathy for the afflicted, and tolerance towards the indolent and ill behaved. (Jainism Tattvarthasurta) All creatures are God's children, and those dearest to God are those who treat His children kindly. (Mohammed) Love animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble their joy, don't harass them, don't deprive them of their happiness, don't work against God's intent. (Dostoyevsky)

-57- Bodhisatvas see all beings like parents see their only son. They are delighted to see him practicing goodness, but when their son is ill they are filled with empathy and are constantly concerned. Likewise when Bodhisatvas see any being enmeshed in the illness of illusion, their hearts ache with compassion. (Mahaparinirvana Sutra) Whenever I injure any kind of life, I must be quite certain that it is necessary. I must never go beyond the unavoidable, not even in apparently insignificant things. That man is truly ethical who shatters no ice crystal as it sparkles in the sun, tears no leaf from a tree. (Dr. Albert Schweitzer) Animals are my friends – and I don't eat my friends. (George Bernard Shaw)

George Bernard Shaw

One is dearest to God who has no enemies among the living beings, who is nonviolent to all creatures. (Bhagavad Gita) He who harms animals has not understood or renounced deeds of sin…Those whose minds are at peace and who are free from passions do not desire to live at the expense of others. (Acharanga Sutra) Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile. (Albert Einstein) I count all that part of my life lost which I spend not in communion with God, or in doing good. (John Dunne) As a mother even at the risk of her own life protects her only son, so let a man cultivate goodwill without measure among all beings. Let him suffuse the whole world with thoughts of love, unmixed with any sense of difference or opposed interests. (Buddha)

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Light

Exalted, drawn, and absorbed into the uncreated Light, I beheld that which cannot be related. (Angela of Foligno)

The middle region of the sky, where in the spirit dwelleth, is radiant with the music of Light. (Kabir)

He is the Light of all lights which shines beyond all darkness. (Bhagavad Gita)

True love, wisdom and power are the greatest gifts that one gets by basking in the sunshine of Heaven’s Light. (Sant Kirpal Singh) Once you discover this Light and learn to live by it, your whole existence will be changed. Love will permeate your very being and it will burst forth from the very pores of your body. (Sant Kirpal Singh)

When the Light is seen shining within your heart and the Music of the Spheres becomes audible, you behold the Light in all that is outside, you see the one Light in all. This is the Universal Vision that the One is in all and all are in One. (Sant Kirpal Singh)

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Our mind is pure and simple. When it is emptied of thought, it enters the pure and simple Light of God, and finds nothing but the Light. (Symeon) Ground yourself, strip yourself down, to blind loving silence. Stay there until you see you are gazing at the Light with its own ageless eyes. (Rumi)

Looking up gives Light, though at first it makes you dizzy. Get used to this Light, unless you’re a bat! The sign of your having this Light is your vision of the end. The lust of the moment is in truth your dark grave. (Rumi)

My mind withdrew its thoughts from experience, extracting itself from the contradictory throng of sensuous images, that it might find out what that Light was wherein it was bathed…And thus, with the flash of one hurried glance, it attained to the vision of That Which Is. (Saint Augustine) And I entered and beheld with the eye of my soul (such as it was) above the same eye of my soul, above my mind, the Light Unchangeable…He that knows the Truth knows what that Light is, and he that knows It, knows eternity. (Saint Augustine)

Absolutely unutterable and indescribable are the lightning like splendors of Divine Beauty; neither can speech express nor hearing apprehend. Shall we name the brilliance of the morning star, the brightness of the moon, the radiance of the sun - the glory of all these is unworthy of being compared with the true Light, standing farther from it than does the gloomiest night and the most terrible darkness from midday brightness. (Saint Basil the Great)

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I wish I could give a description of at least the smallest part of what I learned, but, when I try to discover a way of doing so, I find it impossible; for, while the light we see here and that other Light are both light, there is no comparison between the two and the brightness of the sun seems quite dull if compared with the other. In short, however skillful the imagination may be, it will not succeed in picturing or describing what that Light is like. (Saint Teresa of Avila) You were darkness once, but now you are the Light of the Lord. Be like children of Light, for the effects of the Light are seen in complete goodness and right living and truth. (Saint Paul)

By meditation upon Light and upon Radiance, knowledge of the spirit can be reached and thus peace can be achieved. (Patanjali)

Every region and everything is utterly beyond words. What beauty and glory! How can I describe them? There is nothing here on earth to convey the idea. I am helpless. (Swami Ji)

Swami Ji

-61- The simple, absolute and immutable mysteries of Divine Truth are hidden in the super luminous darkness…For this darkness, though of deepest obscurity, is yet radiantly clear; and, though beyond touch and sight, it more than fills our unseeing minds with splendors of transcendent beauty. (Dionysius the Areopagite)

For you the outside will now stand transformed as the very expression or manifestation of God - everywhere the Light of God will dazzle your eyes; even in the apparent diversity and activity of nature you will strangely be conscious of an all-pervading stillness and peace of the Eternal - a consciousness which is unshakably permanent. You will also feel that you are liberated from the harassing dualities of life followed by the crowning experience of an abiding state of ineffable ecstasy. (Swami Ramdas) The point is that you are seeing something beyond nature, beyond the existential, beyond the psychic, beyond even cosmic identity. You are starting to see the hidden or esoteric dimension, the dimension that transcends nature. You see the Light, and sometimes this Light literally shines like the light of a thousand suns. It overwhelms you, empowers you, energizes you, remakes you, drenches you. This is what scholars have called the "numinous" nature of subtle spirit. Numinous and luminous. That is, no doubt, why saints are universally depicted with halos of light around their heads. That is actually what they see. Divine Light. (Ken Wilber) No man who has lived through a temporary spiritual experience is ever likely to forget it. His days will be haunted until he sets out to seek ways and means of repeating it. (Paul Brunton)

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Longing

Thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts can find no rest except in Thee. (Saint Augustine) Saints are not saints by chance, nor by choice, but by necessity - because there is a hunger in their souls which cannot be satisfied by anything less than the Divine. (Nancy Pope Mayorga) When you have an immense thirst for the Divine, when you will not give undue importance to anything else - the tests of the world or the tests of the body - then He will come. (Yogananda) The soul is made of love and must ever strive to return to love. Therefore, it can never find rest nor happiness in other things. It must lose itself in love. By its very nature it must seek God, who is love. (Mechthild of Magdeburg) The longing to go back to the source is present in each being from the very time that it is separated from the source by the veil of ignorance. (Meher Baba) When the Guest is being searched for, it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all of the work. Look at me and you will see a slave to that intensity. (Kabir) I once had a thousand desires, but in my one desire to know You all else melted away. From my first breath I have longed for Him. This longing has become my life. This longing has seen me grow old. (Rumi) It is the burn of the heart that I want. It is this burning which is everything - more precious than a worldly empire - because it calls God secretly in the night. (Rumi) There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled. You feel it, don’t you? You feel the separation from the beloved. Invite Him to fill you up, embrace the fire. (Rumi)

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The pains of love are far sweeter than any conceivable pleasure. (Baba Sawan Singh) Tears in the eyes and pain in the heart are the two pillars between which we pass to go within. (Rumi)

O Beloved, please come back. My heart is broken, and my body is a wreck and almost dead. Come back: for I’ve been blinded from the lack of your Light, and only Light from your window will open my eyes again. Grief has conquered my bleeding heart; only your face will free me of this pain. (Hafiz)

Hafiz

Love

Love the whole world as a mother loves her only child. (Buddha)

If once in this world I win a moment with Thee, I will trample on both worlds, I will dance in triumph forever. (Rumi) I wish I could give you a taste of the burning fire of love. There is a fire blazing inside of me. If I cry about it, or if I don’t, the fire is at work, night and day. (Rumi) Love is the power of God that binds two souls and makes them one; there is no power on earth that can dissolve that bond. (The Aquarian Gospel) To be able to say how much you love is to love but little. (Petrarch) If destiny comes to help you, love will come to meet you. A life without love isn’t a life. (Rumi)

-64-

What happens when your soul begins to awaken your eyes and your heart and the cells of your body to the great journey of love? First there is wonderful laughter and probably precious tears and a hundred sweet promises no one can ever keep. But still God is delighted and amused you once tried to be a saint. What happens when your soul begins to awake in this world to our deep need to love and to serve the Beloved? O the Beloved will send you one of His wonderful, wild companions - like Hafiz. (Hafiz)

Hafiz

O Lord - You have seduced me. I was seduced. (Into Great Silence) When all the strings of my life will be tuned, then at every touch of yours will come out the music of love. (Tagore)

Tagore

So the first principle of devotion or bhakti is to know that God is everywhere. We are living in Him and He is in us. (Sant Kirpal Singh)

Love of body or skin is passion. Love of God is…devotion. It is pure love. It is love for love's sake. It is divine. (Sivananda) The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed. (J. Krishnamurti)

-65- The world is happy with the intoxication of wine, but I have drunk deep from the fountain of love and devotion. Day and night I am intoxicated with its bliss (Mirabai)

Mirabai

There is no path greater than love. There is no law higher than love. And there is no goal beyond love. God and love are identical. (Meher Baba) God is love, and our souls are also love, and it is through love alone that we can know God. (Sant Kirpal Singh) For love is victorious in attack, and invulnerable in defense. Heaven arms with love those who it would not see destroyed. (Lao-tzu)

Lao-tzu

It is possible that a man can be so changed by love as hardly to be recognized as the same person. (Terence) Love possesses seven hundred wings, and each one extends from the highest heaven to the lowest earth. (Rumi)

-66- Love is the expression of an ancient need, that human desire was originally one and whole and the desire and the pursuit of the whole is called love. (Aristophanes)

Aristophanes

Born at the banquet of the gods, Love has of necessity been eternally in existence, for it springs from the intention of the Soul towards its best, towards the Good; and as long as the Soul has been - Love has been. (Plotinus) Time is a factory where everyone slaves away, earning enough love to break their own chains. (Hafiz)

They do not love who do not show their love. (Shakespeare) Love is the energizing elixir of the universe, the cause and effect of all harmonies. (Rumi)

Rumi

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Meditation

The Kingdom of God is within you. (Jesus Christ) I went round the streets and squares of the city of this world seeking Thee, and I found Thee not, because in vain I sought without for him who was within myself. (Saint Augustine) Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s spirit dwells in you? (Saint Paul)

Meditation is most necessary, for only by meditation will all things come of their own accord. (Sant Kirpal Singh)

Learn to sit still and be mentally still, and the silence thus generated will be more vocal than words spoken and written; and you will have an instantaneous solution not only to your personal problems but to the problems of others as well. This is the greatest secret of success. (Sant Kirpal,Singh) Sitting quietly, doing nothing, everything is achieved. (Zen saying) The gift of learning to meditate is the greatest gift you can give yourself in this life. For it is only through meditation that you can undertake the journey to discover your true nature, and so find the stability and confidence you will need to live, and die, well. (Sogyal Rinpoche)

-68- When you realize where you come from, you naturally become tolerant, disinterested, amused, kindhearted as a grandmother, dignified as a king. Immersed in the wonder of the Tao, you can deal with whatever life brings you, and when death comes, you are ready. (Lao-tzu)

If you really want to rid yourself of present bad habits…you have no greater recourse than meditation. Every time you meditate deeply on God, beneficial changes take place in the patterns of your brain. (Yogananda) When you realize the unborn, uncreated, unconditioned, you are liberated from everything born, created, and conditioned. (Buddha)

Through meditation, the Higher Self is seen. (Bhagavad Gita)

Contemplation for an hour is better than formal worship for sixty years. (Mohammed)

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Contemplation places us in a purity and radiance which is far above our understanding. (Ruysbroeck) If the mind can get quiet enough, something sacred will be revealed. (Helen Tworkov) This is the only way…to explain existence, to overcome sadness and grievances, to banish death and misery, to find the right path, to realize Nirvana - it is correct meditation. (Buddha)

Contemplation is for man the end of human life. (Saint Thomas) True meditation gives us, as it were, wings for flight to a higher realm and thus detaches us from terrestrial fetters. (Paramananda) All this talk and turmoil and noise and movement and desire is outside of the veil; within the veil is silence and calm and rest. (Bayazid al-Bistami) When meditation is mastered, the mind is unwavering like the flame of a lamp in a windless place. (Krishna)

Meditation is not a means to an end. It is both the means and the end. (J. Krishnamurti) Mystery and manifestations arise from the same source. This source is called darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gateway to all understanding. (Lao-tzu)

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This humble receptiveness, this still and steady gazing, in which emotion, will, and thought are lost and fused, is the secret of the great contemplatives on fire with love of that which he has been allowed to see. (Evelyn Underhill)

Mystical prayer…is a supernatural intercourse between the soul and the divine, or some aspect of the divine, sometimes full of Light and joy, sometimes dark and bare. In some of its degrees it is a placid, trustful waiting upon messages from without. In others, it is an inarticulate communion, a wordless rapture, a silent gazing upon God. The mystics have exhausted all the resources of all tongues in their efforts to tell us of the rewards which await those who will undertake this most sublime and difficult of arts. (Evelyn Underhill) If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently and replace it tenderly in its master’s presence. And even if you did nothing during the whole of your hour but bring your heart back and place it again in our Lord’s presence, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed. (Saint Francis de Sales) There is only one failure in meditation: the failure to meditate faithfully. (Eknath Easwaran) Do not get excited or impatient in your efforts to find God. Be wholehearted, but not anxious about getting results. Be patient. Move toward your Divine Goal ever calmly, with tranquility. (Yogananda) While meditating, don't concentrate on the results of meditation. Meditate, rather to please God. If you seek results, you will be disappointed if they don't come. Meditate without attachment to the fruits of meditation. (Yogananda)

-71-

We can say either that we make progress little by little, or that we do not even expect to make progress. Just to be sincere and make our full effort in each moment is enough. (Suzuki Roshi) Greed for enlightenment and immortality is no different than greed for material wealth. It is self-centered and dualistic, and thus an obstacle to true attainment. Therefore, these states are never achieved by those who covet them; rather, they are the reward of the virtuous. (Lao-tzu) Repetition, for no special purpose and without end, is the way to follow the cosmic order. The point is not to look for something, but to practice. Continue until you reach your coffin. If you practice every day, after a while you no longer have to think about practicing or decide or want to practice. So repetition is very important. (Suzuki Roshi)

Suzuki Roshi

Meditation…is the expression of your true nature; it is the activity which appeases your inmost desire. (Suzuki Roshi)

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Mind

The mind is the most powerful, clever, and cunning of enemies. (Baba Sawan Singh) Swami Ji has said that we should not hesitate to go all out to still the mind. We do not fully grasp that the mind takes everyone to his doom. It is like a thousand-faced snake, which is constantly with each being; it has a thousand different ways of destroying the person. The rich with riches, the poor with poverty, the orator with his fine speeches – it takes the weakness in each and plays upon it to destroy him. (Sant Kirpal Singh)

Sant Kirpal Singh

Mind is very powerful. At the time of deliberation, it makes promises but does not care to fulfill them when the occasion arises. (Sant Kirpal Singh) What is the demon? Your own mind. It is not outside, this demon is inside; that complicates the battle. You have to go into yourself. (Chidananda) Mind is consciousness which has put on limitations. You are originally unlimited and perfect. Later you take on limitations and become the mind. (Ramana Maharshi) There is nothing wrong with God’s creation. Misery and suffering only exist in the mind. (Ramana Maharshi) Mind control is not one's birthright. The successful few owe their success to their perseverance. (Ramana Maharshi)

-73-

We are caught in the prison of the mind. If we are to escape we must recognize that we are in prison. If we think we are free, then no escape is possible. (Gurdjieff) The mind is said to be two-fold: the pure and also the impure; impure by union with desire – pure when from desire completely free. (Upanishads) The mind is like a fire which is fueled by thoughts and desires. If there are no thoughts or desires, then the fire of the mind will die out. (Lakshmana) The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. (John Milton) Conquer the mind, and you conquer the world. (Guru Nanak)

Guru Nanak

When the mind is stilled, when the intellect is stilled, that is called the highest state by the wise. (Upanishads) To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders. (Chuang Tse) The mind has a way of being drawn away by passing fancy…The mind is the enchanter, the usurper who has established sovereignty over you. (Sathya Sai Baba)

One must first discipline and control one's own mind. If a man can control his own mind he will find the way to enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him. (Buddha) The mind is, without doubt, unsteady and difficult to curb, but it can be controlled through practice and dispassion. (Bhagavad Gita)

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The attainment of the one-pointedness of the mind and the senses is the best of austerities. It is superior to all religious duties. (Sankaracharya) When you have learned to control your mind in the face of disturbances, then your mind has acquired one-pointedness. (Patanjali)

Patanjali

The cessation of the mind's waves is liberation. (Patanjali) One should use the mind in such a way that it be free from any attachment. (Diamond Sutra) The mind unlearns with difficulty what has long been impressed on it. (Seneca) There is no misery or suffering outside your own mind because the whole world is nothing but a projection of your mind. (Annamalai Swami) A mind that is fast is sick. A mind that is slow is sound. A mind that is still is divine. (Meher Baba) Thou has commanded that an ill-regulated mind should be its own punishment. (Saint Augustine) The perfect man's mind is like a mirror. It grasps nothing; it refuses nothing. It receives, but does not keep. (Chuang Tse) If you are always thinking about worldly things your mind becomes dirty. From a spiritual point of view the mind is like a mirror; it is only useful when it is clean. (Saradamma)

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Music of the Spheres

The Sweet melody of the Music of the Spheres is endlessly playing within us. (Baba Sawan Singh) Through the practice of listening to this Music, all sins, impurities and afflictions are removed. The pains of many births are eliminated and one gains bliss. Doubts and fears are destroyed. One enjoys heavenly bliss and dwells in his original Home. (Sant Kirpal Singh)

There is a sound of truth vibrating within - a song which is sung in every being. There is a great attraction in hearing this sound, through which all other attractions will fade away - one becomes free of them. (Sant Kirpal Singh) From the life of Lord Krishna we learn how He once jumped into the River Jamuna, where lived a thousand-headed poisonous snake. Lord Krishna won over this monster with the music from His flute; that is, the Music of the Spheres. It again indicates that to control the serpent-mind there is no other means than the Sound Principle. (Sant Kirpal Singh)

Lord Krishna

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Out of this temple of the body I am hearing a Sound calling me, “Come up”. Bell is ringing wildly: “come back, my children, come back“. (Shamas Tabrez) The Music of the Spheres is so intense and swift that It pulls me up in an instant. (Plato)

If you should in this world bring many thousand sorts of musical instruments together, and all should be tuned in the best manner, and the most skillful masters of music should play on them in concert together, all would be no more than the howlings and barkings of dogs in comparison of the Divine Music, which rises through the Divine Sound and tunes from eternity to eternity. (Jacob Boehme)

Jacob Boehme

All the seven regions are resounding with this Sound. But fools do not hear It, for the Sound is subtle. (Hafiz) A Sound is coming from the eternal abode to call you back. (Tulsi Sahib)

Tulsi Sahib

Reverse the outward perception of hearing and listen inwardly to the perfectly unified and intrinsic Sound of the mind-essence. (Buddha)

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Obedience

The highest type of love for the lover is to live in the Will of the Beloved. (Sant Kirpal Singh) If you love me, keep my commandments. (Jesus Christ)

One way of pleasing the Master is to live up to what the Master says without regard to what your mind says or what your heart likes. (Sant Kirpal Singh)

Sant Kirpal Singh

Generally, you’ll find we don’t keep His commandments; we simply modify something to our own interests or purposes. (Sant Kirpal Singh) A lover ought to embrace willingly all that is hard and distasteful, for the sake of his Beloved; and not to turn away from Him for any contrary accidents. (Thomas a’ Kempis) If a man consorting with me does not conform his life to my commandments, what benefit will ten thousand precepts be to him? (Buddha)

-78-

Forget about likes and dislikes. They are of no consequence. Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness. (George Bernard Shaw) The aim of obedience to the guru is not to enslave the disciple, but to liberate his will from that which enslaves it truly: whims, and much more - bondage to likes and dislikes, and to desires and attachments. (Yogananda) Happy is the man who doesn't give in and do wrong when he is tempted, for afterwards he will get as his reward the crown of life that God has promised those who love Him. (Saint James)

God is faithful and will not permit you to be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also give you a way out that you may be able to bear it. (Saint Paul) The successful person is the individual who forms the habit of doing what the failing person is unwilling to do. (source unknown) One is only as obedient as one is humble, and one can never be humble if one is not obedient. (Saint Catherine of Siena) Every great person has first learned how to obey, whom to obey, and when to obey. (William Ward) Obey what is revealed you from your Lord. God is aware of all you do. And put your trust in Him, for He is your guardian and trustee. (Qur’an)

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Old Age

Many blessings do the advancing years bring with them. (Horace) The objective is to live a full life, not just a long one. Survival into old age requires only good luck, whereas living enough demands character. (Seneca) As for old age, embrace it and love it…The gradually declining years are among the sweetest in man’s life. (Seneca) We grow old more through indolence than through age. (Christina of Sweden) Old as I am in age, I have no feeling that I have ceased to grow inwardly or that my growth will stop at the dissolution of my flesh. (Mahatma Gandhi) If you have peace of mind, contentment, old age is no unbearable burden. Without that, both youth and age are painful. (Sophocles)

Sophocles

For the ignorant, old age is winter; for the learned, old age is the harvest. (Yiddish saying) Nothing is inherently and invincible young except spirit. And spirit can enter a human being perhaps better in the quiet of old age and dwell there more undisturbed than in the turmoil of adventure. (George Santayana) The spiritual eyesight improves as the physical eyesight declines. (Plato)

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No wise man ever wished to be younger. (Jonathan Swift) At sixty a man has passed most of the reefs and whirlpools.…that man has awakened to a new youth. (George Luks) Grow old with me! The best is yet to be. (Robert Browning) I used to think that eighty was a very old age, but now that I am ninety-one I don’t think so anymore. There are times I feel like a boy. As long as you are able to admire and to love, you are young. (Pablo Casals) There is no finer or more fitting way to spend time during the evening years of life than turning the mind toward reflection and then stilling it in the Silence. (Paul Brunton) Work is not always required of man. There is such a thing as sacred idleness. (George Macdonald) I do not seek for gratification of my senses or passions, but have retired from the world for the sake of Supreme Enlightenment. (Buddha)

Patience The spiritual path is an arduous up-hill journey and requires steadfast patience and perseverance. (Sant Kirpal Singh) Patience is the noblest virtue, but is the fruit of very long cultivation. (Sant Kirpal Singh) Flowers do not force their way with great strife. Flowers open to perfection slowly in the sun. Don’t be in a hurry about spiritual matters. (White Eagle)

-81- Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig I answer you that there must be time. Let the tree first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen. (Epictetus) Patience is all the strength a man needs. (Sathya Sai Baba) To lose patience is to lose the battle. (Mahatma Gandhi) Patience is crowned with faith: where one has no patience, one has no faith. The prophet said, “God hasn’t given faith to anyone in whose nature there is no patience.” (Rumi) The virtue of patience is one which most assures us of perfection. (Saint Frances de Sales) Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections, but instantly set about remedying them – every day begin the task anew. (Saint Francis de Sales) The greatest prayer is patience. (Buddha)

Siddhartha Gautama

(Buddha) The great thing and the hard thing is to stick to things when you have outlived the first interest, and not yet got the second which comes with a sort of mastery. (Janet Erskine Stuart) With time and patience the mulberry leaf becomes a silk gown. (Oriental proverb) If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it is owing more to patient attention than to any other talent. (Sir Isaac Newton)

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All things come round to him who will but wait. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles, and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself? (Lao-tzu)

Lao-tzu

Patience is a bitter plant but its fruit is always sweet. (Persian saying) Though patience be a tired mare, yet she will plod. (William Shakespeare)

Perseverance Man has got himself so enmeshed in mind and the outgoing faculties that his release from them can only be brought about by struggle and perseverance. (Sant Kirpal Singh) Steady perseverance alone will tame your mind, and it is only through a tamed mind that you can experience God. (Sathya Sai Baba) The drops of rain make a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by often falling. (Lucretius) The constant dripping of water wears away the stone. (Sufi saying) I hold to the doctrine that with ordinary talent, and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable. (Thomas Buxton)

-83- No rock is so hard but that a little wave may beat admission in a thousand years. (Alfred Lord Tennyson)

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is filled with educated derelicts. Perseverance and determination alone are omnipotent. (Calvin Coolidge) Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance. (Samuel Johnson) Tis knows by the name of perseverance in a good cause - and of obstinacy in a bad one. (Laurence Sterne) The characteristic of heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts. But when you have chosen your part, abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Perseverance is the very hinge of all virtues. (Thomas Caryle)

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Prayer

Prayer must arise from the depths of the soul. It should not be a vain repetition of empty words with little meaning in them. What we pray for we must really wish for, not only intellectually but from the very core of our being. It must churn the very soul to its depths and the music of prayer should come out and tingle from the very nerves, tissues and fibers of the entire frame making us unmindful and oblivious of everything else beside the sweet music of the soul. (Sant Kirpal Singh) The secret of a successful prayer lies not so much in the words we use, nor in the time we devote to it, nor in the effort that we put into it, as it lies in the concentrated attention that we may give it at the seat of the soul so as to make it soulful. The most natural form for a fruitful prayer is the yearning of a soul without the agency of words, oral or mental, with the tongue of thought. A prayer like this generates and releases such a fund of spiritual energy that all the Cosmic Powers are attracted and combine together, shaping out things as best as possible. (Sant Kirpal Singh) Usually prayer is a question of groaning rather than speaking, tears rather than words. (Saint Augustine) Prayer is the wing wherewith the soul flies to Heaven, and meditation the eye wherewith we see God. (Saint Ambrose)

-85- Never think that God's delays are God's denials. True prayer always receives what it asks, or something better. (Tryon Edwards) Prayer is not an old woman's idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action. (Mahatma Gandhi) You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance. (Kahil Gibran)

Kahil Gibran

If you ask of God, He gives you what you ask, but if you dare to live Him, God gives Himself and all that you would have asked for. (Sri Aurobindo) Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God. (Saint Paul)

When I pray for something, I do not pray; when I pray for nothing, I really pray…To pray for anything except God might be called idolatry. (Meister Eckhart) Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet - closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet. (Alfred Lord Tennyson) More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of. (Alfred Lord Tennyson)

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Purification

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. (Jesus Christ)

Jesus Christ

No one can be enlightened unless he be first cleansed or purified and stripped. (Theologia Germanica) Understand this if nothing else: spiritual freedom and oneness with the Tao are not randomly bestowed gifts, but the rewards of conscious self-transformation and self-evolution. (Lao-tzu)

Lao-tzu

Find for yourself what habits are obstacles in the way of truth; get rid of them by and by, and fill their place with good ones. (Baba Sawan Singh) When you realize that something is unwholesome and bad for you, give it up. And when you realize that something is wholesome and good for you, do it. (Buddha) Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together. (Vincent van Gogh)

-87- Abstinence is easier than moderation. (Saint Augustine) When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you. (Lao-tzu) My foes - desire, hatred, and their kindred - are without hands, without feet. They are neither cunning nor valiant. How do they enslave me? They dwell in my spirit, and there at their ease they smite me. I will never turn back from fighting them. I make war on them all. (Shantideva)

Shantideva

The process of self-purification is not the work of a moment, nor of a few months but of years - nay, extending over a series of lives. The later a man begins the living of a higher life, the longer must be his period of probation, for he has to undo the effects of a long number of years spent in objects diametrically opposed to the real goal. The more strenuous his efforts and the brighter the results of his work, the nearer he comes to the threshold. If his aspiration is genuine - a settled conviction and not a sentimental flash of the moment - he transfers from one body to another the determination which finally leads him to the attainment of his desire. (letters from the Masters of Wisdom) Life is a campaign against foes, it is a battle with obstacles, temptations, hardships and limitations. These foes are within man and so the battle has to be incessant and perpetual. (Sathya Sai Baba) The surest sign of a person of the highest wisdom is that he or she is unattracted by the pleasures of the world. Even the subtle tendencies have ceased. (Yoga Vasistha) Wisdom begins with sacrifice of immediate pleasures for long-range purposes. (Zen Soup)

-88- Enlightenment consists not merely in the seeing of luminous shapes and visions, but in making the darkness visible. The latter procedure is more difficult, and therefore, unpopular. (Carl Jung)

Carl Jung

However harsh its form, however painful the activities to which it spurs him, the mystic recognizes in this breakup of his old universe an essential part of the Great Work. (Evelyn Underhill) The downward drag is incessant, and can be controlled only by those who are clearly aware of it, and are willing to sacrifice lower interests and joys to the demands of the spiritual life. (Evelyn Underhill) To the true lover of the Absolute, purgation is a privilege, a dreadful joy. (Evelyn Underhill) If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite. (William Blake)

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Regret

Get the full benefit of meditation, and increase it day by day. The more you increase it, the nearer will you advance toward your goal. If you refuse, the day will come when you will be filled with regret for the lost opportunity. (Sant Kirpal Singh) For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: “It might have been.” (John Greenleaf Whittier) If you must begin then go all the way, because if you begin and quit, the unfinished business you have left behind begins to haunt you all the time. (Chogyam Trungpa) The trouble with you is that you think you have time. (Buddha) Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered, and that my life is fleeing away. (Psalm) Meditate now, lest you regret it later. (Buddha) Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable. (Sydney Harris) The bitterest tears shed over graves are for the words left unsaid and deeds left undone. (Harriet Beecher Stowe) A wrong-doer is often a man that has left something undone, not always he that has done something wrong. (Marcus Aurelius) All wisdom can be stated in two lines: what is done for you - allow to be done. What you must do yourself - make sure you do it. (Essential Sufism) The worm is in the root of the body’s tree; travelers, it is late! Life’s sun is going to set. During these brief days that you have strength, be quick and spare no effort of your wings. (Rumi)

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Remembrance

A man who has got love with him, love of God, is attached to God so much that all other things leave his mind, he is not attracted by anything else. (Sant Kirpal Singh) No matter where you are or what you are doing, you should not forget God. (Sant Kirpal Singh) The true saint goes in and out among the people and eats and sleep with them and buys and sells in the market and marries and takes part in social intercourse, and never forgets God for a single moment. (Aabu Sa'id Ibn) Think of God more frequently than you breathe. (Epictetus) Misery is due to the great multitude of discordant thoughts that prevail in the mind. If all thoughts be replaced by one single thought, there will be no misery. (Ramana Maharshi) There is nothing so lovely and enduring in the regions which surround us, above and below, as the lasting peace of a mind centered in God. (Yoga Vasishtha) A person should pine for his Master as does the rainbird for a drop of rain. He should repeat His Name with every breath and should think of His form day and night. (Guru Arjun)

The breath that does not repeat the Name of God is a wasted breath. (Kabir) Those who really want to be yogis must give up, once and for all, this nibbling at things. Take up one idea; make that one idea your life. Think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave other ideas alone. (Swami Vivekananda)

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Solitude The greater the solitude, the better. There is no better luck than solitude. (Baba Sawan Singh) If you desire some company, find a good and truthful person – otherwise keep aloof and lead a lone life. (Sant Kirpal Singh) If a traveler does not meet with one who is his better, or equal, let him firmly keep his solitary journey; there is no companionship with a fool. (Buddha) Beginners on the spiritual path, especially, should be very careful in the company they keep. They should mix with other devotees, and try not to mingle with ego-saturated, worldly people. They should especially avoid people who are negative, even if those people are devotees. (Yogananda) I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. (Henry David Thoreau) Seclusion is the price of greatness. (Yogananda) The primary sign of a well-ordered mind is a man’s ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company. (Seneca) I only go out to get me a fresh appetite for being alone. (Lord Byron) I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity. (Albert Einstein)

Albert Einstein

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The departure from the world is regarded not as a fault, but as the first step into that noble path at the remotest turn of which illumination is to be won. (Joseph Campbell) Something of the hermit’s temper is an essential element in many forms of excellence, since it enables men to resist the lure of popularity, to pursue important work in spite of general indifference or hostility, and arrive at opinions which are opposed to prevalent errors. (Bertrand Russell) Eagles fly alone; sheep herd together. (Sufi saying)

Speech

Never wish to think or to appear clever; have no desire to speak. It is well to speak little; better still to say nothing, unless you are quite sure that what you wish to say is quite true, kind, and helpful. (Sant Kirpal Singh) Indulgence in unnecessary talk and debate results in the exhaustion of mental powers. (Baba Sawan Singh) If you want to feel God's guidance in your life, don't waste time talking idly with others. Silence is the altar of the Spirit. (Yogananda) Calm silence, sincerity, and courteous words, whether one is agreeing or disagreeing with others, mark the person who knows how to behave. (Yogananda) Keep the golden mean between saying too much and too little. (Publilius Syrus) The man who finds God loses his speech. (Mohammed) Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage. I have often regretted my speech, never my silence. (Publius Syrus)

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In futile discussion is much poison; in much talk is great mischief. Keep your mouth shut; suffer all in silence; and remember the Name Unfathomable. (Kabir)

Meher Baba

Silence is an answer to a wise man. (Euripides) Bear kindly when others chatter. Be not irritable: calm men do not answer back. (Buddha) Speech is a mirror of the soul: as a man speaks, so is he. (Publius Syrus) One of the things that keep us at a distance from perfection is, without doubt, our tongue. (Saint Francis de Sales) Nature has given us two ears, two eyes, and but one tongue, to the end that we should hear and see more than we speak. (Epictetus) Tranquil sage indeed is he who can control his speech. (Buddha)

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Surrender

They are the chosen ones who have surrendered. (Rumi) If we surrender to God we do not have to make any choices at all. (Papa Ramdas) No man enjoys the true taste of life but he who is ready and willing to quit it. (Seneca) You should be above the idea of death and life – neither fear death, nor desire the joy of life. (Baba Sawan Singh) A real devotee makes no distinction in pain and delight; his business is devotion. (Baba Sawan Singh) The "awakened" person is recognized by particular signs. First of all is liberty; he does not allow himself to be tossed about by the vicissitudes of life, by fear, joy, anxiety, success, or failure. Then there is the spiritual force that reveals itself in calmness, an ineffable smile, and deep serenity. (Thich Nhat Hank) One of the first proofs of self-mastery is when one shows that he can be kind and forbearing and genial with companions of the most dissimilar characters and temperaments. And one of the strongest signs of retrogression is when one shows that he expects others to like what he likes and act as he acts. (Damodar) Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well. (Epictetus)

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Work is worship. When there is joy in the work itself, why do you want the fruit of it? Make work itself worship. That is possible only when you surrender to God and allow Him to work through you.(Papa Ramdas) I am always content with what happens; for I know that what God chooses is better than what I choose. (Epictetus)

Epictetus

Praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and sorrow come and go like the wind. To be happy, rest like a great tree in the midst of them all. (Buddha) Surrender and all will be well. Throw all responsibility on God. Do not bear the burden…If one surrenders to God, there will be no cause for anxiety. Nothing will affect you…God never forsakes one who has surrendered. (Ramana Maharshi) There is no way of making a person true unless he gives up his own will. In fact, apart from complete surrender of the will, there is no traffic with God. (Meister Eckhart)

Meister Eckhart

One must realize that no physical or mental effort can take one to God. One must give up, mentally and physically, all idea of reaching God and one must finally throw oneself at God’s feet and let Him do whatever He wishes with you. When there is complete physical and mental self-surrender, then God’s grace takes you to the goal. (Saradamma)

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The only real surrender is that in which the poise is undisturbed by any adverse circumstance, and the individual, amidst every kind of hardship, is resigned with perfect calm to the will of God. (Meher Baba)

Meher Baba

Be resigned to every situation and think honestly and sincerely: "Baba has placed me in this situation." (Meher Baba) Have a happy state of mind, a state that is untouched by the events of life. (Yogananda) The Master gives himself up to whatever the moment brings. (Lao-tzu) Stay at the center and let all things take their course. (Lao-tzu) If you want to be given everything, give up everything. (Lao-tzu) Do nothing by self-will but rather conform to heaven's will, and everything will be done for you. (Lao-tzu) The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinions for or against anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind. (Seng Tsan) Surrender is the most difficult thing in the world while you are doing it; and the easiest when it is done. (Bhai Sahib) Surrender does not denote any change in the external mode of life, but a right attitude toward it. (Papa Ramdas)

-97- When surrender is complete, everything is God. Everything that happens is then His action. In that state there is peace, harmony and an absence of thoughts. (Annamalai Swami) Man is too often afraid to surrender. He thinks he will lose something; but one never loses when he gives himself absolutely to God. (Turiyananda) Offer unto me that which is very dear to thee – which thou holdest most covetable. Infinite are the results of such an offering. (Krishna) Real activity is combined with calmness which can't be ruffled. It is a balance of mind which is never disturbed, whatever happens. Only when the mind is calm and collected is the whole of its energy spent in doing good work. (Swami Vivekananda) Surrendering yourself to God is giving up what you can't keep in order to realize what you can't lose. (Shantideva) Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all else shall be added unto you. (Jesus Christ) The great thing is to resign all your interests and pleasures and comfort and fame to God. He who unreservedly accepts whatever God may give him in this world - humiliation, trouble and trial from within or from without - has made a great step towards self-victory. (Francois Fenelon) We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is awaiting us…The old skin has to be shed before the new one is to come. (Joseph Campbell) If you attach yourself to gross energies - loving this person, hating that clan, rejecting one experience or habitually indulging in another - then you will lead a series of heavy, attached lives. This can go on for a very long and tedious time. (Lao-tzu)

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Third Eye

When the third eye opens, you see the Light of God within you. (Sant Kirpal Singh)

If, therefore, thine eye be “single” thy whole body shall be full of Light. (Jesus Christ)

A door within the body leads into the realm beyond - the Kingdom of God. (Sant Kirpal Singh) This “Single” or “Third Eye”…provides an ingress into the spiritual worlds - the Kingdom of God - now a lost realm to most of us…Of this inlet or ingress little is known by the people at large…This center, when located, gives an access to, and provides a supraconscious contact with, the realms that lie beyond the farthest ken of the human mind. (Sant Kirpal Singh)

Sant Kirpal Singh

It is here at the eye-center that one has to tap within, and to “knock” and knock hard with fully concentrated and single-minded attention, as an undivided individual, in order to find the way-in and gain entry into the astral world. (Sant Kirpal Singh)

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The Kingdom of Heaven is within. (Jesus Christ)

Straight is the gate and narrow is the way which leads into life, and few there be that find it. (Jesus Christ)

The way Godward is narrower than hair and sharper than the razor’s edge. (Mohammed)

In the center behind and above the eyes there is an aperture; on this side of it is the material world, in which we are living now; and on the other side is the astral world. (Baba Sawan Singh)

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Virtue

Without virtue, God is only a word. (Plotinus) The purpose of all virtue is to lead us to union with God. (Saint John of the Cross)

Saint John of the Cross

Beauty , unaccompanied by virtue, is a flower without perfume. (French proverb) The great man always thinks of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort. (Confucius) It is the repeated performance of just and temperate actions that produces virtue. (Aristotle) He only acquires virtue who endures routine and sweat and postponement of fancy to the achievement of a worthy end. (Ralph Waldo Emerson) A man of highest virtue will not display it as his own. (Lao-tzu) Virtue depends partly upon training and partly upon practice; you must learn first, and then strengthen your learning by action. (Seneca) Seven virtues minister before the Throne of Glory: Wisdom, Justice, Righteousness, Kindness, Compassion, Truth and Peace. (Talmud) What is virtue, my friend? It is to do good. Do it, that is enough. We shall not worry about your motives. (Voltaire)

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Self command is not only itself a great virtue, but from it all the other virtues seem to derive their principle luster. (Adam Smith) The good hate sin from an innate love of virtue. (Horace) Vice may be had in abundance without trouble; the way is smooth and her dwelling place is near. But before virtue the gods have set toil. (Hesiod) The virtuous man promotes agreement; the vicious man allots the blame. (Lao-tzu) To bring forth and preserve, to produce without possessing, to act without hope of reward, and to expand without waste, this is the supreme virtue. (Lao-tzu)